Your Daily Cookie-
© 06/29/08
By Dahni
Death by Chocolate – Certified organic
Good day, here is your cookie for today. Talk-en dirty? No, No, No, I’m not talking about talking dirty. I may be older, but I am neither as old as dirt nor on a first name basis with dirt. When I write, ‘Talk-en Dirt’, I am literally talking about dirt. You know, soil, the stuff we walk on and where stuff grows out of. It’s the stuff we are made out of and many will one day return to. Not man-made like professional dirt (yes there is such a thing), but real down to earth, sometimes mud, common everyday, just plain-o Dirt! What’s up (or down), with dirt? It’s way important! I baked your cookies to resemble dirt and your choclate milk below looks like mud. 
The Flavor of the Day
Over 70 years ago, farmers knew about all this creepy-crawly, weird stuff in the dirt, but they didn’t know what it was all for. Government stepped in and made food cheap and that was good for us, but not for the farmers. For centuries, farmers had been rotating their crops and even once in awhile, they left the land for a whole year to ‘rest.’ They did not have the land to waste anymore, the time to wait or the resources to farm as their forefathers. With all these pressures to make an honest living, they had to do something to increase their yields and their profits. Farm subsidies became common as was paying farmers NOT to grow stuff. The smart people in charge came up with hybrid plants (basically sterile that produce no seeds). Plants would be without seeds to bother people, bigger and sturdier to resist all kinds of problems. The smart people in charge again decided that the farmers needed pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer. For fertilizer, they settled on only 3. These were and remain for the most part today, just nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. There was just one problem with this fertilizer. Remember the weird, creepy-crawly stuff in the dirt that the farmers new about, but were not sure what it was? Now they understand that soil and us people need around 90 nutrients. But that’s OK right, we will get them from our food. Or are we?
What else do we know now? Soil quality worsens as chemicals increase! Disastrous mismanagement of our soil and intensive farming methods have created such poor food quality that high-dose supplements are not a luxury, but the bread and butter of robust good health. In 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio confirmed that the average US farm soils were 85 per cent depleted of minerals compared with a worldwide depletion of 75 per cent. But this is hardly a new story.
As far back as 1936, a US Senate report (Document 264) stated that American farms and ranges were depleted of minerals and so, therefore, was the food. The researchers who wrote the Senate document tested a large, representative sample of soils.
The implications of their report were staggering. It meant that some 99 per cent of the public were deficient in a vast array of minerals. Even at that time, it was recommended that the diets of farm animals and people should be supplemented with minerals.
The only thing that has changed since then is that the overall problem has worsened. Today’s soils – even organic soils – contain very little of what humans need every day of their lives. Consequently, most ‘food’ that arrives on our tables has very little in the way of vitamins and minerals essential to human health.
Oh, remember all the stuff the smart people in charge were doing to increase yields and resist problems? Well, not only was the soil effected so were seeds. Some plants deleted of much of their nutritional value were grown to consume and others were grown for seed. If the soil is poor, what will be the quality of the plants and the seeds grown, over time?
There are two good things that have been a habit over these many years. Soil samples have been kept to compare different soils and for year against year. The other thing done has been to keep older seeds with which to grow future hybrids, cross-pollinate and grow resistant crops. These are known as heirloom seeds. These are seeds as any garden plant that has a history of being passed down within a family, just like pieces of heirloom jewelry or furniture. It was a tradition to set aside a part of your acreage as seed crop.
Is the soil and seed really depleted of much of, their nutritional value? But the food is still OK right?
Doctors and others have been telling us for years to eat spinach, as it is rich in iron. A recent study (results presented to Harvard University), had several people in a group eating a lot of bowls of spinach over some time. At the end of the study, most in the group had an iron deficiency! Researchers could not understand why, until they tested the soil samples of today with those of 50 years ago. What were the results? Today, you would have to eat 47 bowls of spinach as compared to 1 bowl, 50 years ago.
Do you know what happened in this country, January 24, 2005? On this date, it was announced that Seminis, the world’s largest vegetable seed company would be acquired by a company in St. Louis, MO. Guess which one? Monsanto. Monsanto? Excuse me, aren’t they a chemical company making stuff for carpets and many other non-food related industries? Yes and this would enable them to pass their rival, DuPont (another chemical company), that controlled ‘Pioneer Seed.’
In the early 1990s, billionaire Alfonso Romo, owner of Ciagarrera La Modena, Mexico’s largest cigarette company, set out to control vegetable seeds. By 1994, he had succeeded in building Seminis, purchasing longstanding seed companies such as, Petoseed and Asgrow.
At the time of the Monsanto announcement, it was estimated that Seminis controlled 40 percent of the U.S. vegetable seed market and 20 percent of the world market, supplying the genetics for 55 percent of the lettuce on U.S. supermarket shelves, 75 percent of the tomatoes, and 85 percent of the peppers, with strong holdings in beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and peas.
There are dozens of commercial and garden seed catalogs that carry the more than 3,500 varieties from Seminis.
Brand-name companies under Seminis developed, released, produced and distributed varieties common to the market farmer and even home gardener. Many of the Seminis varieties are derived from their in-house breeding programs, as well as industry alliances with DuPont, and university partnerships with the likes of Cornell, Texas A & M and the University of California.
The genetic diversity of the world’s food crops is eroding at an unprecedented and accelerating rate. The vegetables and fruits currently being lost are the result of thousands of years of adaptation and selection in diverse ecological niches around the world. Each variety is genetically unique and has developed resistances to the diseases and pests with which it evolved. Plant breeders use the old varieties to breed resistance into modern crops that are constantly being attacked by rapidly evolving diseases and pests. Without infusions of genetic diversity, food production is at risk from epidemics and infestations.
The acquisition of Seminis by Monsanto was viewed as two complete opposites, coming together for nothing more than increased profits. Not only would this purchase make them the largest seed company in the world, they would also become the third largest agrochemical company in the world.
Seminis and Monsanto had done business together long before they became one company. In 1997, Monsanto began to insert its ‘Roundup’ resistant gene into one of Seminis’ lettuces. The Wall Street Journal reported in 1999 that Seminis had received U.S. regulatory approval for selling disease-resistant genetically engineered squash and tomatoes with longer shelf lives and that the firm was working on using biotechnology to create sweeter peas and worm-proof cucumbers. In the same Journal article, Romo envisioned a Seminis future with biotech crops. Romo said, “Seeds are software, and we have the seeds.”
A-century-and-a-half ago there was only one mega-distributor of seeds in this country, the U.S. government. Lobbying and activism took it down. Its monopoly was broken by the American Seed Trade Association. They were supplied with the necessary cash and resources to do it, by Monsanto.
After WWWII, many Americans were still attending their ‘Victory Gardens,’ providing much of their own food. Single over farming and large scale corporate farms were not yet common. The Santa Clara Valley grew vegetables and fruit. Later this same area would become Silicon Valley and would grow mostly Internet startups. All of this began to change and early genetic engineering was in its initial stages of explosion.
In the 60’s, a few larger seed firms began to purchase smaller companies (mostly to acquire strong hybrid holdings). But these consolidations were nothing compared to what would come next.
Diamond v. Chakrabarty was a Supreme Court case decision handed down on June 16, 1980. The decision would now allow ownership of not just a plant, animal or seed, but the genetics as well. This opened the door to patents of life forms, based on their genetics. More than 1,800 such patents were granted, following the ruling. Companies that had no history in seed production were buying up seed companies. This led to the control by just a few multinational companies whose interests were primarily chemical, pharmaceutical and for profit. No other natural resource (marine, timber, minerals etc.), has ever left the public into private hands with such intensity and so little and so little oversight.
“There is a direct threat to our food system when we have a preponderance of
genetic resources controlled by institutions whose only goal is profit,” plant breeder Frank Morton expressed emphatically when asked for his perspective on the Monsanto acquisition. Diversity and competition have historically made for healthier economies as well as ecologies.
There are many that cannot believe this has happened in our country. There are many that cannot understand it. I was once among them. I mean, there is dirt into which you plant seeds. The seeds grow and produce plants. Animals eat the plants. Humans eat the plants and the animals. Everything is living, so what’s the problem? Life is not the issue it’s the quality of life. How long will this life live? Will the life continue to reproduce itself? Will the life continue as a species on this planet?
America used to be able to feed the world, but can now barely feed itself. To help anyone else, you must first be able to help yourself. The public has cried out against genetically altered foods, but we have in fact, been eating them for years, perhaps our entire lives. We probably still are. The public has demanded more and more organically grown food, but the labels stating organically grown should also include:
“…grown from organic ‘heirloom’ seed.”
If it is not in the dirt, it will not be in the plants, the animals or humans. Therefore, we must supplement.
Supplement: something added to complete a thing, supply a deficiency, or reinforce or extend a whole.
Your cookie for this day, consider Dirt out of which all things must live. Consider buying organic foods and demand that food is grown from organic ‘heirloom’ seed. Consider growing some of your own food. Remember, we need around 90 nutrients daily to be not just living, but healthy. Consider vitamin/mineral/antioxidant supplementation. Consider using supplementation that is isotonic capable. For more information about isotonic delivery, click here. If you need more information on obtaining isotonic capable supplementation, reply below with your name and E-mail address and I will send you the information.
Tomorrow’s cookie – ‘The French Macaroon’
Baking cookies Just for You,
Dahni the cookie man
Dip Dunk or Don’t
